Jogger Stalker
Richard Kern films women jogging, just follows the camera and doesn’t look away. Jogger Stalker
is literal—bodies moving through the city, unaware they’re being filmed. There’s no metaphor here, no aesthetic camouflage.
He’s been making work like this for decades. The gaze is deliberate and without apology. The discomfort is the entire point. You can find something honest in it—the acknowledgment that looking takes something, that the male gaze isn’t innocent—or you can find something repulsive. Usually both.
What I find interesting is that Kern never tries to redeem the work. No distance, no theoretical framework, no irony. He makes it and leaves it there. Most artists would flinch away, would try to explain or justify or wrap it in something that makes them feel better about themselves. Kern doesn’t. That kind of clarity—just the thing itself, without the apology—is rare.
Uncomfortable to watch. But there’s something to an artist who won’t look away from what he’s doing.